“Yeah. I’m leaving for Berkeley in the fall.”
“Good choice,” he takes another sip. “But maybe kismet got it wrong, after all. If you’re leaving and all. Because apparently, I’ll be staying for a while. That is, after I find an apartment. A good one is hard to find around here.”
He’s so confident, so open. It doesn’t even feel odd that a total stranger is telling me these things, out of the blue, so randomly. I feel like I know him already, actually.
I stare at him. “An apartment?”
He stares back. “Yeah. The thing you rent, it has a shower and a bedroom, usually?”
I flush. “I know that. It’s just that this might be kismet after all. I might know of something. I mean, my father is going to rent out our carriage house. I think.”
And if I can’t have it, it should definitely go to someone like Dare. The mere thought gives me a heart spasm.
“Hmm. Now that is interesting,” Dare tells me. “Kismet prevails, it seems. And a carriage house next to a funeral home, at that. It must take balls of steel to live there.”
I quickly pull out a little piece of paper and scribble my dad’s cell phone on it. “Yeah. If you’re interested, I mean, if you’ve got the balls, you can call and talk to him about it.”
I push the paper across the table, staring him in the eye, framing it up as a challenge. Dare can’t possibly know how I’m trying to will my heart to slow down before it explodes, but maybe he does, because a smile stretches slowly and knowingly across his lips.
“Oh, I’ve got balls,” he confirms, his eyes gleaming again.
Dare me.
I swallow hard.
“I’m ready to ask my second question,” I tell him. He raises an eyebrow.
“Already? Is it about my balls?”
I flush and shake my head.
“What did you mean before?” I ask him slowly, not lowering my gaze. “Why exactly do you think this is kismet?”
His eyes crinkle up a little bit as he smiles yet again. And yet again, his grin is thoroughly amused. A real smile, not a fake one like I’m accustomed to around my house.
“It’s kismet because you seem like someone I might like to know. Is that odd?”
No, because I want to know you, too.
“Maybe,” I say instead. “Is it odd that I feel like I already know you somehow?”
Because I do. There’s something so familiar about his eyes, so dark, so bottomless.
Dare raises an eyebrow. “Maybe I have that kind of face.”
I choke back a snort. Hardly.
He stares at me. “Regardless, kismet always prevails.”
I shake my head and smile. A real smile. “The jury is still out on that one.”
Dare takes a last drink of coffee, his gaze still frozen to mine, before he thunks his cup down on the table and stands up.
“Well, let me know what the jury decides. If we don’t get going, we’ll be late for our grief therapy.”
And then he walks away.
I’m so dazed by his abrupt departure that it takes me a second to realize something because kismet always prevails and I’m someone he might like to know.
He took my dad’s phone number with him.
“Cal? You ready?”
Finn’s voice breaks my concentration, and with it, the moment. I glance up at my brother, almost in confusion, to find that he’s standing up, waiting for me. It’s time to go. I scramble to get up, feeling for all the world like I’m rattled, but don’t know why. It’s this moment, it’s this place, it’s…the same.
“Do you feel like you’ve been here before?” I ask Finn in bewilderment as we walk through the doors of the Sunshine Room. He glances at me and grimaces.
“Yeah. Every week since Mom died.”
That’s not what I meant and he knows it. The sense of déjà vu is strong, almost overwhelming, and I feel like I almost know what will happen next.
But I don’t.
Because Dare DuBray is across the room and his smile is brilliant and new.
When our eyes connect and the sparks fly and the air sizzles between us, he holds up my father’s phone number and winks.
Warmth rushes through me because
Kismet always prevails.
The jury has decided.
I feel it in my bones.
Author’s Note
I know what you’re wondering.
Was it real, or not real?
Was Calla crazy, or not?
Well, dear reader, let me ask you….
What do you think?
That’s the beauty of stories. Sometimes, the ending resides in you. If you don’t like an ending, choose another.
I’ve always been a person who believes things happen that we can’t understand, that the energy we put into the world comes back to us. There are lots of different cultures, including the Romani, who believe the same.
Is it possible to be cursed, to re-live time, to change it? Do ghosts exist? Is there a reason for déjà vu?
I have no idea.
But I’m open-minded enough to think that anything is possible.
And because of that, to me, Calla’s story was real. Her ending was real, and she saved Finn, and she’ll live happily-ever-after with Dare. Because I love a good Happily-Ever-After story. Calla managed to change time and prevent the curse.
But if you don’t like to think about mysticism, or supernatural elements, or things we can’t explain,
Then you can choose to believe that Calla was crazy all along and none of this happened, and that she and Dare met and fell in love in a psych ward.
It’s entirely up to you.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this story.
I know it was a twisted journey, where the end was the beginning and the beginning was the end. I know that, and I did it on purpose.
I wanted to try to take you down a path where your mind wasn’t your own, just like Calla’s.
It had to happen in order.
And it did.
Acknowledgments
This series has been mind-bending to write, and mind-bending to read. Due to personal issues and contractual obligations, the release date was pushed back, and I’m so thankful to you, my awesome amazing fans, for sticking with me and being so kind and patient. I hope Lux was worth the wait.
I’d like to thank Natasha Tomic, for her keen eye and general amazingness. I love her, and she knows that. I’m also going to marry her gorgeous accent. But she knows that, too.
Thank you so much to Talon Smith, Maria Blaylock and Jennie Wurtz. You ladies were awesome at giving me your input and advice, and not being afraid to tell me the truth.
To the members of the Nocte Support Group: Your support and enthusiasm over this past year has been extraordinary, and you’ll never know how much I appreciate it.
To my family: Thank you for putting up with my craziness this year while I put myself in Calla’s shoes and walked her dark path.
To my readers: You are all amazing--- each one of you. Thank you so much for reading my words, and being so kind and awesome.
About the Author
Courtney Cole is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author who was born and raised in the midwest, lived most of her adult life near Lake Michigan and has now moved to Florida where she writes beneath palm trees. To learn more about her, please visit www.courtneycolewrites.com
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